Preds give helping hand to Pop Warner brethren

The arena football team offers assistance after burglars damaged the children's trophies.

January 24, 2007|By Henry Pierson Curtis, Sentinel Staff Writer

The Orlando Predators are helping the city's only reigning national champions -- the South Central Tigers Pop Warner football team -- fight back from a program-threatening burglary.

The offer came this week after the professional Arena Football League's team members learned that scrap-metal thieves destroyed the youngsters' trophies in search of brass and copper.

"When something like this happens, we have to do something," Predators spokesman Dan Pearson said Tuesday. "We believe in youth football. And it's where most of our players started."

The South Central Tigers fielded a Midget squad of 13- to-15-year-old players who went 16-0 last year against the best Pop Warner teams in the U.S. They won the Pop Warner Super Bowl last month at Disney's Wide World of Sports by shutting out a team from New Jersey 14-0.

It's a success story noted by city leaders trying to reduce record-breaking crime.

The players come from the same neighborhoods where kids as young as 13 were charged with first-degree murder last year.

"The key is, you have to get them in positive, after-school activities," Stanley Stone, chairman of the Mayor's SAFE Orlando Task Force, said last week about the Tigers. "We should find businesses to help support some of these programs."

That's the reason the Predators are helping.

"Study after study shows kids who get involved in sports are less likely to get into trouble," Pearson said. "Youth football provides the obvious benefits of structure and discipline to youngsters."

The thieves who broke into the Pop Warner office on the grounds of Memorial Middle School on L.B. McLeod Road destroyed more than $2,000 worth of air conditioners in addition to about two dozen trophies.

Trophies Unlimited of Winter Garden and the Predators have agreed to repair or replace the damaged trophies in time for the team's Feb. 3 banquet, said Sue Plowden, who coaches Pop Warner's cheerleaders.

A charity carwash last Saturday raised $900 toward replacing the air conditioners.

Another carwash is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Bruton Boulevard and Columbia Street. Donations to the South Central Tigers can be made at any SunTrust Bank branch.

"Where we stand right now, it's hurt us really bad," Plowden said of the break-in. "All of the help from the community will help us."